Uber Faces Self-Driving Car Criticism

Uber, a very popular ride-hailing service, recently gained some negative attention for putting self-driving cars on the roads in California without having permission to do so by the state itself.

Towards the end of 2016, Uber went against the direction of California state regulators and put self-driving cars on the roads of San Francisco that did not perform well. According to reports, Uber’s cars ran a total of six red lights in a very short time. The car also supposedly had trouble navigating bike lanes as well.

Uber had announced that they would be creating self-driving cars in December of 2016, and were quickly criticized for not being registered on the California DMV’s list of companies approved to test self-driving cars.

Uber was insistent that the vehicles being produced were not autonomous but were just equipped with “Advanced Driver Assist System” so they did not require a permit. Regardless, the state of California insisted that the vehicles were autonomous and revoked registration of the cars Uber produced.

However, during the midst of this controversial back and forth, an Uber self-driving car was spotted running a red light in San Francisco.

Uber claimed that the traffic violation was due to human error. They claimed that the person inside did not take the car over in time which caused the car to run the light. Many other sources believe, the New York Times included, that the error was due to the cars’ poor mapping programs.

Overall, the incident indicates how committed Uber is to producing a self-driving car, for better or worse.